Outside My Window ~ 8.26.2012

Outside my window…at 5:45 this evening it is pouring rain, thunder and lightening…..for the last hour.  We are currently at 75°F with a flood advisory until 7:00 this evening….and a pollen alert?  Seriously….pollen?  The rain is forecast to stop around 8:00 this evening.  There is a section of my street that is already flooding again. Yesterday morning we received three inches of hard rain in three hours and it flood a good deal of our region.  When I last checked early yesterday we had received 3.54 inches of rain….I don’t know what the final tally was for my area, let’s just say I have two very full rain barrels.   The flood canal in back of my house was up to my fence, the highest level I have ever seen in the 18 years I have lived here….the parking area in front of my house was flooded with about 6 inches of water and that has never happened before.  I was fortunate….no water came into my house or any of our cars….we are fine albeit a bit soggy.  Many in my neighborhood and city can not say the same thing.  We are forecast to receive an additional 2 inches of rain this evening…I’m hoping that is incorrect.  The rest of the week calls for temperatures to be in the upper 70’s to low 80’s with the exception of Tuesday which is forecast for a high of 88°F.  Fortunately we have only isolated chances of thunderstorms later in the week….that is all dependent on Isaac’s track after landfall however.  I know there are areas that could use the moisture more than we could…Isaac remnants will be much more appreciated in that region than they will be here.  Speaking of Isaac ~ looks like the same area that got hit by Katrina will have a painful reminder of what was….and right around the anniversary date of Katrina’s second landfall.  Fortunately it won’t be as powerful as Katrina was…well, hopeful it won’t be.

I am thinking…that maybe I need to quit wishing for rain ~ especially around this time of year.

I am glad…that I didn’t have to do what so many of my neighbors were doing this morning ~ using a wet vac to get water out of their cars.  Lots of cars with doors and windows wide open….car hoods up with guys looking and poking around the engines….tow trucks pulling cars to destinations unknown.  I’m glad the rains stopped long enough each time yesterday afternoon that the water was able to recede before reaching the bottoms of our cars….I’m glad water didn’t get into the house.

I am going to…change my Internet service provider this Tuesday as well as my cable.  I wanted to move up from DSL ~ even though what I have had has been pretty good, it was time for a change.  It also means after the change I will finally get the Chiller channel ~ sa-weet!  What can I say, I have loved horror movies since those Friday nights when Shock Theater use to come on television oh so many years ago.     😀

From my kitchen…is my Bolognese sauce.  Weird thing is I had printed out the recipe that I posted on here and noticed in the ingredients it says beef broth, in the instructions it says to add the chicken broth.  I had one of those “huh?” moments as I was making it….so I fixed it.  I had to…there is no way I could have left it like that once I realized my mistake ~ it would have bugged me to the end of days.  You can get the corrected version (and one with a few additional notes added) right here.  I have been getting in to the kitchen a little bit more recently.  My latest adventure ~ homemade buttermilk biscuits using Nina’s recipe.  This was the first time I have made homemade buttermilk biscuits…first time ever for making biscuits.  They weren’t pretty, but they were good.  I know because I had to test them with several different things ~ a little butter…..some of Nina’s wonderful fig preserves {my next task}….and of course a sausage patty.  Yum.

I am hearing…the ticking of my many clocks….I am not hearing any rain or thunder now.   😀

Plans for the week include…the installation of the new Internet and cable….working from home on Tuesday….I suppose getting my first prescription for eye glasses ~ and may I say I was shocked…shocked….at how expense those suckers are.  Shocked!  I’m going to have to bite the bullet and buy a pair….I was told I should not be driving at night without corrective lens.  {Sigh}

One of life’s little pleasures…making homemade fig newtons with fresh fig preserves and hot homemade biscuits.  Best.  Ever.

From my camera…are some images I posted on Facebook yesterday afternoon but am sharing here today for those that do not belong to Facebook.  The photographs do not do justice as to how deep the water was in some areas.  These were taken between 8:00 and 8:30 yesterday morning….

In this next image I was standing on a curb….you can barely see my blue water shoes.  The water was 15 inches deep here…this was one block over from my house close to a man made lake that was overflowing onto our streets.